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Tuesday, September 13, 2011

The Dragon*Con Cabaret has been produced for the past four years by Atlanta burlesque performer Stormy Knight as part of a five day weekend that occurs each year over the Labor Day holiday.Dragon*Con is a weekend of science fiction, fantasy, comics and general geekdom so it seemed only natural that the show’s theme this year would be Comic Book Characters.The show was hosted by Baroness Von Schmalhausen as Zatanna and included some popular favorites including Tora Torrid as Wonder Woman to Lenny Kravitz’s version of American Woman, Desire Evoquer as Super Girl which included a large rhinestone “S” on her chest in the Superman tradition, Sammy Sutra as Poison Ivy, Big Mamma D singing about boobs as Silk Spectre, as well as Blaze as a very shiny Dark Phoenix, and a Victorian version of Harley Quinn by Silver Kitsune.Some more obscure characters included a very classic routine by Scarlett Letter as Medusa, Scarlett Witch who I think was played by Eyrie Twylite, and Porcelain as Cheetah.

I, Katherine Lashe, was very excited to be asked to perform as The Joker from Batman due to the fact that I had made a breakaway straight jacket for a Mad Hatter routine I did back in March at an Alice in Wonderland show. Sadly, because of the unreliability of email, I didn’t find out until one week before the show that I was doing the routine. Had I received the email when it was sent, I’m not sure I could have done any better with getting everything together. Due to the fashion trends in Atlanta I actually had my choice of purple suits at the thrift store. I found one that was slightly too big to easily fit my additional costume pieces underneath. Through the magic of sequins and E6000 I was able to bling out my ensemble fairly effectively in a short period of time for not too much money. However, to make something truly ready for a burlesque show this does require the ability to get out of your clothes fairly quickly. A jacket is a jacket so other then make it shiny I pretty much left it as is. By slitting the seams on the sides of the pants I was able to insert a separating zipper in the leg and snap on the waist band on each side to make the pants go from solid to break away. My green shirt was sequined and cut down to a bib so with the jacket it on it looked like a full shirt but was actually just a front with no sleeves or back and had a snap at the collar for easy removal. Underneath the straightjacket and suit were green heels, purple fishnets with a purple thong with green beaded fringe and green pasties with tassels. I topped this all off with a green wig and some serious make-up time to turn myself into the demented character that is The Joker.

The crew included House Mom Mon Cherie, whose job is much like a traditional stage manager and made sure everyone knew the show order, collected everyone’s music and was there in case anything went wrong for the performers. Sunny Midnight and Heaven Leigh were our stage kittens; which mean they not only placed our props but also acted as “panty wranglers” and picked up the discarded clothes from the stage after each act. Though there is no nudity in the burlesque shows it does include the art of the strip tease so there is often a laundry pile after each act.

Over all I really enjoyed being a part of the show and felt it was very appropriate for us to do that theme at Dragon*Con. In the past the Cabaret had been more on the classic side, and though that’s beautiful and traditional I don’t feel that it spoke as much to the fan base other then geeks who had never seen a live naked woman finally getting to see scantily clad girls that were actually three dimensional. I think that Stormy is doing a great job and I love the direction she’s taking the show.